Gabriel PassmorePOLS 454Term PaperNovember 14, 2012

Protests, Uprisings, and Human Rights in Modern Day China

In recent years China has experienced a series of uprisings, revolts, and protests in

different provinces throughout the country. Why are these protests occurring and are they

connected to the Chinese Communist Governments abuse of human rights? These events

are significant to the question because China has had a long history of governmental

corruption and years of human rights abuses that has sparked international attention. The

main themes that will be presented in this paper include the types of political issues that

activated these protests. The prospect that the causes behind these protests are related or

connected to the government in some way will be highlighted in the main section of the

paper. The issue over human rights abuses will be discussed as well as the relevance of

the lack of freedom in China that can be a contributing motivator to ignite an upheaval

when peace is absent.

Human rights abuses has plagued China’s republic for decades because China is still

an un-democratic country whose government displays an arsenal of abuses towards its

citizens for the sole reason of staying in power. The Chinese Communist Government

still to this day implores a series of measures that are designed to control and remind the

masses of who’s in charge. The concept of power is an obvious indictor of why the

Chinese Communist Party controls the population in the form of subjects for the

continuation of the regime. Human rights abuses are handed down as a concept of fear.

Fear, that if the Chinese government opens up to full democracy then they will surely fall

from power. The Chinese people face a fear in the form of abuses that will scare the

population and keep them in line, never to face down the government and its visible

corruption because of the consequences if an individual steps out of line.

In the awake of these protests and uprisings the Chinese people have cared less about

fear and more about standing up for their rights. As a consequence, the Chinese

government acts ever so swiftly in order to stop these incidents from accelerating into

something catastrophic that the government might not be able to control. In the after math

of the chaos many Chinese citizens have been injured in the form beatings, detained by

the police, or died as a result. On May 13, 1999, tensions between villagers and

government officials had escalated to the point that water hoses had to be used to disperse

the crowd. Seventeen people had been arrested and seven were charged with criminal

activity. Thousands of protesters clashed with the police in China’s southwestern Yunnan

province, blocking major traffic routes and wrecking an ambulance because the

paramedics were taking care of injured police officers and ignoring protesters who were

also injured. The police have shot and killed two people, arrested twenty while seriously

injuring a third person in a protest outside a rubber plant in the Yunnan province.

Hundreds of villagers armed with shovels and sticks clashed with police and construction

workers in the city of Zhaotong in the northeast Yunnan province. Fifty vehicles were

destroyed and twenty people were injured when a villager was punched and kicked by

security guards for taking pictures.

In the past, protests were mostly seen in rural areas and small towns, led by villagers,

farmers, and migrant workers. However, as of 2011 many of these uprisings were

reported in major cities. The protests in Wukan were demonstrated as a farmer set off

three bombs that killed two people including himself while injuring ten others. On June

10, 2011 a Chinese citizen claimed that he was going to take revenge on society by

setting off explosives outside of local government offices. As a result, two people were

injured in the attack. Social groups are on the rise in China and they employ a certain

event to express their anger towards the government. One event of this nature was the

July 23, 2011 high-speed train collision that killed forty people and injured one hundred

ninety two in the after math. Social protests have also been on the rise in China as was

the case with the rise of the Arab revolutions were overseas websites supported the effort,

which led to a crackdown on civil society by the government were numerous writers,

bloggers, and human rights lawyers were arrested. One of the highest profile cases of

social protest was the April 3, 2011 arrest of famous Chinese artist Ai Weiwei. However,

Ai was released after the domestic and international media pressured the Chinese

authorities. Today, Ai is kept under house arrest by the Chinese government.

Work place protests are common throughout China, especially in August and

September of 2004 in the Dazhou province where over one hundred workers of the

Tongda Chemical Company “blocked the main gate of the living quarters of the factory

staff and attempted to stop them from going to work”(Zhang). On June 28, 2008 in the

Weng’an province, a local government invoked 30,000 violent protesters that descended

onto the station torching three government buildings and burning cars. The police

responded by using tear gas to break up the crowd. Local police were hit with stones and

sticks in the Shishou province in the attempt to protect a dead body from becoming

cremated. Ethnic religious tensions reached a peak in the Xinjiang province with a

Uighur uprising, which claimed the lives of one hundred and eighty four people. Social

justice issues triggered protests in the northeastern city of Tonghua, which resulted in a

manager being beaten to death when he threatened the protesters. The violence in Lhasa

has been ongoing for many years in the awake of human rights abuses from the Chinese

government, were individuals are mercilessly tortured with different kinds of materials.

People are regarded as animals that are suspended in the air while their limbs are

shackled, ice is rubbed on their skin and then they are touched with an electric prod.

There are also protests of how women are treated in Lhasa in which they are forced to

have mandatory sterilizations.

The protests and uprisings that have occurred in China over the recent years have not

happened because of coincidence or random deception, but rather for a reason to express

animosity towards the Chinese government’s authoritarian rule. The Yunnan protests

were a result of enforced land expropriation through coercive measures by the township

government. The government officials would enter the village and force householders

into accepting compensation payments for their land. Then they would move in with their

utility vehicles and bulldozers, destroying crops and often conspiring to take more land

then they were permitted. The land contracts often contained escalating tuition fees and

high taxes such as the education surcharge, which affected the householder’s financial

stability. Many villagers were angry that the compensation they were supposed to be

renewed for was often postponed for reasons unknown. The government officials

contradicted the central policies that were intended to protect the villager’s interests. For

example, the expropriated land would be used to build a school, but instead the land

would be used to benefit the officials by building private residences and business

premises.

More riots have ensued in the Yunnan province because of compensation issues. The

residents are being forced to resettle for the construction of a dam. The disputes over

payment continue to remain unresolved and the residents are dissatisfied with the quality

of the resettlement houses because there are located on an earthquake zone. The unrest

that occurred at a rubber plant in the Yunnan province that resulted in two people being

killed by the police was caused over a dispute involving the sale of the crops. The rubber

farmers protested against the local government because they were forcing the farmers to

sell their crops at prices that were forty percent lower than what they obtain in the open

market. These land protests are occurring almost every month in China because of the

local government’s violation of central government regulations on compensation and the

provision of temporary housing for residents. The local government officials usually go

ahead with the land acquisitions without the consent of the villagers on projects that don’t

acquire the amount of land taken, which is then embezzled from the proceeds of the sale.

Two of the incidents in the Wukan province that claimed the life of two people and

injured many were the result of yet another case of low compensation for the

expropriation of land that government took from farmers. Many of the social protests in

the Wukan province that claimed life and injury were caused by the citizen’s anger at the

Chinese government’s tightened political control of media censorship and freedom of

expression. More than two hundred million Chinese citizens are using weibo, which is the

Chinese equivalent of Twitter. They use this social networking system to discuss politics,

ask questions, and talk about issues within society that makes them angry. This has

challenged China’s political and propaganda establishment as citizens now have the

opportunity to indirectly criticize the government and pre plan events that can under mine

the system. The protests in the Dazhou province between workers and factory staff was

caused by the workers suspecting that the Dazhou local government breached procedures

and were involved in illegal activities that interfered with the operation of enterprise

structuring. The local government had secretly worked out a restructuring plan for the

workers without their representation and made them sign documents saying they would

agree to it.

Protests in the Weng’an province were caused when a young woman’s body was

found in the river. When relatives of the deceased woman went to the police station to

inquire about an investigation they were beaten for no reason and told it was a suicide.

The local government’s poor ability to handle possible criminal incidents, but quick

response to crush protests has caused for the case to be reopened for investigation. The

police officer who assaulted the family was fired, but the case was still ruled a suicide.

Distrust in governmental politicians, corruption, and social turmoil are some of the

leading causes of a series of incidents that occurred in the Shishou province that received

much attention nationwide through the Internet in 2009. The protests erupted when “a

young waiter died after falling from a third floor widow of a hotel reportedly owned by a

local politician who was involved in drug smuggling”(Wu). The police proclaim that the

waiter’s death was the result of a suicide. The local residents denied the police’s

conclusion and instead believed that “the young man had been killed by the hotel

manager to cover up crime and corruption”(Wu). The local police rushed to try and have

the body cremated so the residents would never know the truth about what really

happened. The Uighur riots that occurred in the Xinjiang province were the result of

building ethnic tensions by the government dominated Han Chinese who are intolerant to

minority groups such as the Uighurs. The incident that claimed the life of a manager at

the Tonghua Steel Company was caused by the transition to a market based economy as

the workers became angry and protested because they lost their benefits when the

formerly state owned Steel Company became privatized.

The continued unrest in Lhasa can be contributed to the routine abuse of human rights

by the Chinese government. Lhasa, which is located in Tibet, has always considered itself

independent form the rest of China. Tibetans view themselves as culturally distant form

China through language and religion. Protests are common in Lhasa because of the

Chinese governments driving force to eradicate the Tibetan people from the region,

which includes the use of culture genocide. Culture genocide involves political

imprisonment and the routine use of torture on Tibetan civilians for “the illegitimacy of

China’s sovereignty in the region”(Adams). China is intolerant towards Tibet because of

the ethnic divide between the two groups. The Chinese government is systematically

trying to eliminate all traces of Tibetan culture by suppressing language and religion.

Another form of abuse that causes protests in Lhasa is the treatment of women in the

region. Women are subjected to mandatory sterilizations and forced abortions. This is the

Chinese governments way of reducing the Tibetan population. Tibetans are angry that the

Chinese government would resort to these measures of abuse in hopes of purifying the

Han majority.

When exploring the causes for the recent protests and uprisings in China, the

reoccurring theme is the government’s expropriation of land from the peasant majority.

The peasants are supposed to be compensated by the government for the confiscation of

their land. Land contracts are usually shady deals in which the peasants compensation is

postponed and the reimbursement of land is sometimes located in disaster areas. The

local Chinese government is to blame for a great deal of the protests that occur on a

monthly basis. Whether its unapproved land grabs, corruption, or criminal cover-ups, the

local government is involved in some way. Even though the local government officials

receive their authority and regulations from the central government, never is it reveled

that the central authorities hold the local officials accountable for breaking the law.

Two other factors that revolve around the causes for protests and uprisings in modern

day China are social turmoil and human rights abuses. The Chinese government controls

all aspects of the media and the freedom of speech. No one is allowed to voice his or her

opinion or criticize the government in any way. For years the central authorities have told

the average Chinese citizen what to do, what they can and cannot say, and how to think.

It is to no surprise that the Chinese people protest and rise up when their inalienable

rights such as freedom is suppressed in the from of government crackdowns. Human

rights abuses in the form of cultural genocide conclude why the Tibetan people protest to

stabilize their threatened minority from extinction by the Chinese government.

Work Cited

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